This invention relates to a polyphonic electronic musical instrument in which a musical tone of a specific one of a plurality of simultaneously depressed keys is produced prominently, that is clearly and distinctly.
An electronic musical instrument has already been well known in the art in which the musical tones of a plurality of depressed keys are produced in a first musical tone property (for example a first tone color, a first envelope shape, etc.) while the musical tone of a specific one of these depressed keys (for example, highest note or lowest note key) is produced in a second musical tone property (for example, a second tone color, a second envelope shape, etc.) which is different from the first musical tone property so as to make only the musical tone of the specific depressed keys to be especially clear and distinct among a plurality of musical tones produced simultaneously thereby providing cheerful performance effect.
Such electronic muscial instrument is constructed as shown in FIG. 1, as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,218,948. More particularly, depressed keys of a keyboard 1 are detected by a depressed key detector 2 to produce key informations in the form of key codes, for example corresponding to the depressed keys, and the key informations are assigned to predetermined tone production channels in a key assigner 3. The key informations assigned to respective tone production channels are supplied to a first tone signal generator 4 to form musical tone signals corresponding to the depressed keys in a first musical tone property. The key informations assigned to respective tone production channels are also applied to a special note detector 5 for detecting a key information corresponding to a specific depressed key out of respective key informations so as to apply only the key information corresponding to the specific depressed key to a second tone signal generator 6 that forms a musical tone signal corresponding to the specific depressed key in a second musical tone property. The musical tone signals formed by the first and second tone generators 4 and 6 are applied to a sound system 7 to be produced as musical tones.
With this construction, however, as the musical tone corresponding to the specific depressed key is produced by the sound system 7 in both of the first and second musical tone properties or sounding manners (first and second tone colors, for example), the musical tone of the second tone color (hereinafter called a solo type musical tone) would be masked by a musical tone of the first tone color (hereinafter called an orchestra type musical tone) so that it is impossible to make the solo type musical tone to be especially distinct.